Barbican Cafe

You'll find this place tucked away on Lever Street in Barbican, surrounded by brutalist architecture and the sort of quiet that only exists in pockets of East London. It's the kind of cafe where regulars actually exist, where people sit with their laptops for hours and nobody minds, and where the staff know what they're doing. The coffee is genuinely good—properly pulled espresso, milk that's actually steamed—and the food is simple but done right. It feels like a proper neighbourhood joint that hasn't been discovered by the marketing departments yet, which is precisely why you should go.